AuthorThomas Hardy
NarratorRobert Powell
Duration2h 21m
CategoriesAdult Fiction, Classics
Key StageKS4
PublisherCSA Word
VersionAbridged
A gritty and absorbing glimpse into the lives of women and men living in a small community, and the often unpleasant truths that relationships can sometimes hold. Bathsheba Everdene flees her abusive husband and spends the night by a stagnant and spooky swamp. When light begins to break over her hiding-place, she sees strong parallels between her surroundings and the nature of her own experiences of relationships.
Author: Thomas Hardy
Author Thomas Hardy
Narrator Martin Shaw, Lindsay Duncan
Duration 2h 22m
Tess goes through her life at the mercy of unscrupulous men, who take advantage of their positions in society and of her. But how far can a woman be pushed before she is forced to take revenge? Tess of the D'Urbervilles is an early exercise in girl power, Tess spends her life being bullied by men and is pushed to the brink. A dramatic and tragic st...
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Author: Thomas Hardy
Author Thomas Hardy
Narrator Michael Kitchen
Duration 9h 51m
The unhappily married Lady Constantine breaks all the rules of social decorum when she falls in love with Swithin St. Cleeve, an astronomer who is ten years her junior. Her husband's death leaves the lovers free to marry, but the discovery of a legacy forces them apart.
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The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion
Author: Thomas Hardy
Author Thomas Hardy
Narrator Martin Jarvis
Duration 42m
A tale by Hardy, master of human tragedy, about a girl's sacrifice for her long-engagement and her doomed love for a visiting soldier.
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Author: Albert Camus
Author Albert Camus
Narrator James Jenner
Duration 11h 2m
In the small coastal city of Oran, Algeria, rats begin rising up from the filth only to die as bloody heaps in the streets. Shortly after, an outbreak of the bubonic plague erupts and envelops the human population. Albert Camus' The Plague is a brilliant and haunting rendering of human perseverance and futility in the face of a relentless terror bo...
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Author: Charles Dickens
Author Charles Dickens
Narrator Simon Vance
Duration 31h 21m
The most gorgeously theatrical of all Dickens's novels, Nicholas Nickleby follows the delightful adventures of a hearty young hero in nineteenth-century England. Nicholas, a gentleman's son fallen upon hard times, must set out to make his way in the world. His journey is accompanied by some of the most swaggering scoundrels and unforgettable eccent...
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Author: Charlotte Bronte
Author Charlotte Bronte
Narrator Charlotte Ritchie
Duration 21h 29m
Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Charlotte Ritchie, best known for her roles as Oregon in Channel 4's Fresh Meat, Hannah in the BBC Three comedy Siblings, and as Barbara Gilbert in BBC drama Call the Midwife. With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding sch...
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Author: Jonathan Swift
Author Jonathan Swift
Narrator Jasper Britton
Duration 35h 15m
Lemuel Gulliver, a slightly staid ship's doctor, relates the tales of his astonishing travels. He encounters the tiny, warring Lilliputians; the giant, sceptical Brobdingnagians; the ludicrously intellectual Laputans; and the idealistic - if rather stolid - Houyhnhnms and their bestial servants, the Yahoos. An immediate best-seller when it was firs...
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Author: Thomas Hardy
Author Thomas Hardy
Narrator Anton Lesser
Duration 12h 20m
In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurks the shameful secret of his past and a personality pr...
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Author: Thomas Hardy
Author Thomas Hardy
Narrator Anthony Richardson
Duration 1h 40m
A collection of Thomas Hardy's poems, including 'The Man He Killed', 'The Darkling Thrush' and 'The Subalterns'.
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Author: Emile Zola
Author Emile Zola
Narrator Traci Svensgaard
Duration 6h 41m
In a dingy apartment on the Passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, Th‚rŠse Raquin is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille. The numbing tedium of her life is suddenly shattered when she embarks on a turbulent affair with her husband's earthy friend, Laurent. But their passion for each other soon compels the lovers to commit a crime t...
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